Edwards on the outside
Oskaloosa, Iowa
HAD HISTORY - or rather, the American electorate - swung just another 1.24 percent in his favor three years ago, John Edwards would be surveying the silos and small towns of Iowa as an ultimate insider, running for reelection as vice president of the United States. Instead he breathlessly claims he will rescue Washington from corruption and the Democratic Party from the corrosive New York Senator Hillary Clinton.
"Senator Clinton is voting like a hawk in Washington and talking like a dove in Iowa and New Hampshire," the former North Carolina senator said Monday at the University of Iowa. At a town hall in Ottumwa, he railed against Clinton having a "Rural Americans for Hillary" event in the Washington office of a lobbyist for Monsanto. "I don't know where the rural Americans came from," Edwards said. "Maybe they shipped them in from somewhere. . . . This stuff has got to stop!"
Edwards said if he becomes president, he will tell Congress, "if you don't pass universal healthcare for America by July of this year, July of 2009, I will use every power I have to take your healthcare coverage away from you."
That last line sparked loud applause. Running a potentially fatal third behind Clinton and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois here and nationally, Edwards hoped the ovation was a sign his populist image is recovering from the drip, drip, drip of his infamous $400 haircut, his hedge fund involvement, and his 28,000-square-foot house. In an interview in his campaign minivan, he repeated that getting such a costly haircut was a "mistake" that "I didn't know" about. In Ottumwa, former mayor Van Gates said, "I think it did hurt him a bit."
Fortunately for Edwards, enough unease remains among Democrats about the electability of Clinton or Obama to keep hundreds of forgiving voters coming to his events. They say his missteps pale next to the tragedy of losing a son in a car crash and having a wife with inoperable cancer. "I have a friend who had a $125 haircut right here in Oskaloosa," said Connie Sheesley, a retired school teacher. "What I care about is he's talking about reining in corporate America."
In Iowa City, Marilyn Krachmer, 66, a retired university public health research assistant, said, "I was leaning toward Hillary, but I really liked what he had to say about foreign policy. I would like to see a woman president. . . . But I wasn't sure about her stand on Iran. I'm moving him up in my consideration."
"I've been leaning very heavily toward Obama," said Janice Carpenter, a 72-year-old retired medical secretary in Iowa City. "But Edwards was very specific about getting troops out of Iraq." (Edwards says he would immediately withdraw 40,000 to 50,000 troops.)
Lee Mickey, a 71-year-old retired "farm wife" from outside Iowa City, said she has been going "back and forth" between Edwards and Obama. She liked that Obama spoke out against the invasion of Iraq and says, "I like Obama's hopeful message." But on Monday, she said of Edwards, "His talk today was very, very necessary. I was happy to hear him lay things out the way he did. Where we're headed on Iran is appalling. Edwards and Obama on the same ticket would be fantastic."
John Macatee, a 57-year-old osteopathic doctor who moved to Iowa City in the last year from Holyoke, said he is a strong supporter of Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut but "agreed with everything" Edwards said. "He talked about eliminating all nuclear weapons. I'm 57, and it's been a long time since I heard that."
If there was one consistent knock on Edwards, it was that he is spending so much time hammering Clinton that his original signature issues seem to be left on the shelf. "I was disappointed that he did not seem to have a strategy for the economy," said Mark Chelgren, 39, who owns a wheelchair parts company. "I heard lots of ways he wants to spend more money on education and healthcare but he didn't explain where the revenues would come from."
In the minivan interview, Edwards made it clear that he will go down hammering. He said his hands were not clean on campaign funding, but adds, "Senator Clinton defends the system and says it's OK to take lobbyists' money. . . . The issue is who's going to actually take these people on."
So close to being an ultimate insider, Edwards now plays the outsider who will fight the system. He has less than two months to convince Iowa Democrats not to leave him on the outside, for good.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. 